I posted this back in June on the Etsy forums, but I believe it's still relevant so I thought I'd share it here.

If you are only selling your work online you are missing out on a whole other market for your work. For four years I sold on my local city market along with etsy. Tourists who bought and loved my products came back to shop with me online because they weren't close enough to shop with me locally. They bought gifts for their friends who in turn shopped with me. They told others about my products and so on and so forth.

Last July I took a break from selling both online and off due to medical reasons. I am no longer selling on the market at all. However, I did put my soaps into local gift shops. I work with these shops both on consignment and wholesale. I filled my etsy shop back up. I started working on my blog again. I put myself out there. I started making sales again. And some of those sales were from people who found me locally but lived elsewhere. One person was visiting for a local college graduation and bought one bar of soap at a gift shop. He returned to etsy to buy five more. Another customer from TWO YEARS AGO when I was selling on the market made a purchase just the other day for six bars of soap because she realized she wasn't going to make it back to Virginia anytime soon. Another customer this week made a purchase from just two cities over here on etsy based off a local purchase here in a gift shop. Three sales that I know off based on me putting my products out in the "real world" in just the last seven days. So if you haven't tried to sell wholesale or given a local farmer's market a try, maybe you should rethink doing so. In the long run it does pay off.

Something else. Goal setting really does work. I recently have come to really only on my etsy income. So I have to make money. Because I just started trying to sell online again at the end of last month I've been really worried about getting my sales started back up from basically a complete standstill. But I gave myself a goal of getting an average of one sale a day for the month of June. So far I'm ahead by two sales. What did I do? I went back to basics. I renew several items a day - usually three and that's it - just so I have something that is fresh in searches. I started posting in the etsy forums on a regular basis again. I began posting on my facebook fan page and twitter again. I started my blog back up and have been posting daily. I am actively seeking out blogs with a readership in my target market to review or blog about my work. I am running a contest. When one thing fails, I try something else. I am persistent. I refuse to be discouraged. If I don't make a sale one day, it's okay. There is always tomorrow. I trust in karma. I do a good deed for something else and believe it will come back around when I need it most. And most of all I treat my customers how I would want to be treated. Even if it's going to cost me money in the long run. Because at the end of the day both my customer and myself will feel good about it and you never know when someone will put in a good word for you.